Blog # 9: School's Out-Will hyperlearning replace public education?

Isn’t it Ironic?

Lewis Perelman describes in his 1993 article, Schools Out, a learning opportunity called Hyperlearning, as the upcoming replacement for pubic learning which is supposedly the “last great bastion of socialist economics”(L. J. Perelman, 1993). The irony is that his very suggestion that all citizens may learn to levels previously unimagined through hypermedia, telescom broadband communication, smart environments, and sensory technologies of brain tech is quite likely only possible in a society and world culture where resources are available to all and equally distributed. This describes a true socialist concept, not a capitalist venture. Indeed to continue further, L. Perelman’s’ suggestion to remove the status of education or credentialism, much as the socialists suggested and the Marxist communists did motivation for stature within the system would only shift to the new “caste currency.”

Attempting to support his controversial "Call to Hyper-Arms" L. Perelman suggests privatizing the educational process but not in the economic manner most imagine. Instead of placing education into non governmental agencies to increase completion as Michael Perelman suggested in his March 2006 article Privatizing Education (M. Perelman, 2006). L. Perelman instead advocates use of micro-vouchers to access information and resources. These are interesting concepts however unless the socioeconomics and politics of our culture are transformed the impetus to compete in such a setting may not be obvious for those who struggle to find motivation to learn without structure providing direct feedback and potential reward.

Grasping the concept of real-world learning in a manner which is quite inappropriate and convoluted L. Pearlman suggests the tech/ real world based education system make “mindcraft” the major commodity. Focusing on individual know-how, continuous assessment and feed back are key to his argument, he suggests we can restructure the entire economic system to focus on true achievement not academic goals. Student centered attentions and learning are not new concepts; Quintilian suggested this in 95 A.D.(Kasper, 2005). However, the supposition that problem solving skills and relationships can be developed in the reality he vividly describes would, in my mind, create a world which is alienating, one missing emotional and environmental connections. Elimination of the current social context in which many children do indeed learn, as demonstrated through extensions of Vygotsky’s work in Zone of Proximal Development and other social learning constructs would likely produce students unable to cope with adversity and diversity thus reducing problem solving and networking ability. Different is much easier to ignore or discount if the exit is just a click of the mouse. Our new world needs citizens who have connection and association with others; without this we will not have the motivation to learn or take action.


Kasper, B. B. (2005). EDUCATIONAL REFORM 1983 - 1994: New Ideas or the Rebirth of Quintilian's Ideologies? American Educational History Journal, 32(2), 175.
Perelman, L. J. (1993). School's Out: The hyperlearning revolution will replace public education. Wired Magazine(1.01).
Perelman, M. (2006). Privatizing Education. Monthly Review, 57(10), 45.

Blog # 8: Rethinking Assessment and Educational Reform

Priorities

Ask the majority of Americans how they think their favorite sports team should improve their defense or offense and you’ll receive detailed analysis of past performance, current team status, statistical analysis, suggested improvements and predictions correlating outcome with or without said improvements. Similar detailed and analytical discussions are modeled daily by media outlets in relation to “star” status, cosmetics and fashion, automobiles, and commercialized food items. Awash with sound bites, blaring advertisements and dedication supported by like minded peers our attention is drawn to what our public is told they should desire, what will help them improve their lives. The advertisers most successful are most often those making “personal connections” with the best placement, best design and coincidentally the most funding.

Perhaps this is why issues regarding education reform and the environment often are overlooked by the media and pubic. Who is writing the press release, sponsoring the selling tour, and designing the campaign? Education entities are facing a crisis in silence. Schools as they are currently designed are not able to adapt their philosophies and concurrent methods rapidly enough to assist their charges with appropriate critical thinking skills. Students in today’s day-and-age must to acquire and adapt new knowledge and skills to wade through the flood of information (accurate and not). This is a recognized concern in the field of education but few in the general public realize the impact on their daily lives. Thus the issue slowly slides away with the undertow caused by the overlapping flow of popular trends.

Educational standards are being designed to ensure a common learning and content background. Unfortunately these standards are being utilized, more often than not, as a mechanism of design for assessment rather than an instructional guide. Through out this week’s reading Critical Issue: Rethinking Assessment and its Role in Supporting Educational Reform, we see call for a coordination of content, instruction and assessment. Paralleling this coordination request is societies expectation that students will learn, while in school, the skills they need to survive in the real world. I contend that, to some extent, the students and public already have these skills, as demonstrated by the sports analysis. The problem is that there is no personal context or connection that would cause the students to creatively apply his or her attentions and analytical prowess to in truly significant social and environmental issues or education. We as educators have not made that sale.

Compounding the lack of consumer interest curriculum and assessment designers are passing mixed signals to knowledge facilitators and learners. Current forms of assessment are not modeling critical thinking. Students who do have opportunity to explore in constructivist schools are frequently then assessed with traditional ‘multiple-guess” formats. Bybee and Stage (2005) identify several potential problems: too much time is being spent on how to test, instruction via multiple tunnels of single disciplinary topics, unrealistic “real-world” connections, and disconnect between philosophical ideals and actual application. Bybee’s suggestions for our nation to overcome these faults…embrace innovative science and mathematics programs that examine fewer topics but each to a deeper depth, design accountability assessment to test deep understanding not surface knowledge, and enhance professional development efforts to support and entwine our teachers. By moving toward more detailed understanding both our students and teachers will be exposed emotional and intellectual factors which initiate concern and buy-in necessary to develop respect for themselves and the social and science issues rising in our world.


References and Suggested Readings:

Becker, William E., Jr. (1982). The Educational Process and Student Achievement Given Uncertainty in Measurement. The American Economic Review, 72(1), 229. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 936559).

Bond, L. A. (1995). Critical issue: Rethinking assessment and its role in supporting educational reform. Retrieved April 7, 2006, from: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as700.htm

Bybee, Rodger W & Stage, Elizabeth (2005). No Country Left Behind. Issues in Science and Technology, 21(2), 69-75. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 782479861).

Pearlman, Robert (1993). Designing the new American schools. Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM, 36(5), 46. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 83859).

Tam, Maureen (2006). Assessing quality experience and learning outcomes: Part I: instrument and analysis. Quality Assurance in Education, 14(1), 75-87. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 1016440941).

Blog # 7: Cultural Diversity and Evaluation

Says Who?

Investigations addressing the issue of cultural diversity in the world of evaluation, school based, have been prevalent since the advent of IQ testing. Reeves 1997 article “an evaluator looks at cultural diversity” identifies intricate differences and issues, which can compound results of evaluatory assessments dramatically. Western phrasing and symbols so prevalent in common assessment tools hold different meanings in many cultures.

The Reading Eagle, a local Berks County paper, recently headlined an article relating to the PSSA’s and proficiency levels for seniors in the Reading School district, Reading, Pennsylvania. The Reading District is comprised of over 50% “minority” designated students with nearly 25% in some category of language remediation. In an attempt to address poor PSSA performance has imposed a requirement for all seniors to attain proficiency in the tested areas or they will not graduate. Students who do not attain the appropriate score are required to complete extra work, a packet of about 250 pages of content and worksheets. At this time based on this criteria only 34% of nearly 700 students have attained “proficiency” in both math and English; the remainder must complete the extra work to graduate.

Why are students in Reading having such problems? Could the issue be merely a local cultural issue? Schools in surrounding areas have much higher rates of proficiency. Locally there has been a good deal of pointing fingers, specifically targeting minority families and students. I contest these innuendos and point out the fact that the percentage below proficiency well exceeds the number of minority students even if every minority student did not test successfully, which is certainly not the case! Are these failures to be attributed to the school system and curricular designs, the students or the standardized test structure? Jost et al (2005) have identified core issues of educational inequality such as race, social justice, and diversity curriculum. Many educators only marginally understand the impacts of these issues, and those who claim to be enlightened also blind to the resultant impacts. Students are to be provided appropriate access to educational resources within reason; should not the assessments also be presented in the same spirit.

Many educators think they can create evaluations using the concepts of Universal Design, which embrace the need to recognize different physical needs and adapting tools and materials to be inclusive. In ‘parallel” testing issues for bilingual students we see the overwhelming compounds of dialect just in the Spanish language thus, applying the now simple concepts driving universal design may be impossible (Huempfner, 2004). With this acknowledgement the question arises- “How do we address unique societal complexities, cultural and historical experiences and at the same time evaluate students’ knowledge-base on “western based” content which is not necessarily inclusive?” How do we accommodate differences in lifestyle and responsibilities in these generalized testing situations?




References:
Huempfner, Lisa (2004). Can One Size Fit All? The Imperfect Assumptions of Parallel Achievement Tests for Bilingual Students. Bilingual Research Journal, 28(3), 379-399,494. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 911821441).

Jost, Muktha, Whitfield, Edward L, Jost, Mark. (2005). When the rules are fair, but the game isn't. Multicultural Education, 13(1), 14-21. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 898561911).